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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 21, 2024 15:12:21 GMT -5
Beggars in Spain Nancy Kress
I haven't read a book for the Hugo Award book club for a while, but this was just the one to bring me back in. I always say good sci-fi is a story that makes you think (and this book does that in spades), but there's also a long tradition of wish fufillment in science fiction.. where the marketed-to teen age boy sees a normal teen age boy like himself got on fantastic adventures (and of course get the girl).
I'm a bit more mature than that (really, I am! don't laugh!), but this book is it for me... people that don't have to sleep, and oh, by the way, the only side effect is you don't age? I'm in!
Kress comes up with new tech that provides free. unlimited energy, and that brings about a new tech revolution.. interesting stuff. She also has a really interesting pseudo-religion that I like alot based on fair exchange. Lots of good stuff in there to think about.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 21, 2024 15:41:54 GMT -5
Flying Colours by C.S. Forester
I was pretty lukewarm about the second Hornblower novel, Ship of the Line, but it ended on a cliff-hanger and I wanted to see how it came out. This book was a big step up, rivaling the first novel in its scope and adventure. Following his capture by the French, Hornblower, Lt. Bush and Coxswain Brown are being escorted to Paris to be tried for piracy and almost certainly executed by Bonaparte. Ultimately it's almost impossible to tell much more about the novel without getting in to spoilers. I will say, that while I don't really like Hornblower, he is a pretty fully realized character. He has self-doubts, good qualities, serious flaws, etc. The supporting characters...not so much. But this is a pretty solid adventure yarn. Easily the equal of the first novel and significantly better than the second.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Mar 21, 2024 16:36:46 GMT -5
Another batch of stories read...
"Gullrider" by Dave Smeds "Blood Dancer" by Diana L. Paxson "Kayli's Fire" by Paula Helm Murray "The Ring of Lifari" by Josepha Sherman "Rite of Passage" by Jennifer Robeson "The Eyes of the Gods" by Richard Corwen "Fate and the Dreamer" by Millea Kenin "The Noonday Witch" by Dorothy J. Heydt "Redeemer's Riddle" by Stephen L. Burns "The Tree-Wife of Arketh" by Syn Ferguson
all from Sword and Sorceress IV
"Black God's Kiss" by C.L.Moore "The Unholy Grail" by Fritz Leiber
from The Sword and Sorcery Anthology
"Pay Off Girl" by James M. Cain "The Losing Percentage" by Jeffrey M. Wallmann
from Pure Pulp
"The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers "The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers
from The Hastur Cycle: Tales of Hastur, the King in Yellow and Carcosa
"The Seven Black Priests" by Fritz Leiber
from The Big Book of Adventure Stories
Some of these are rereads, but I'm just reading whichever stories appear next in the anthologies, even if I have read them before. Some, like Chambers, I read as recently as last year, but I still found revisiting them a worthwhile experience. I'm digging the variety of tackling a bunch of anthologies at the same time. Keeps me form feeling like I'm stuck in a rut.
-M
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Mar 22, 2024 12:10:34 GMT -5
Finished the last batch of stories from the Marion Zimmer Bradley edited Sword and Sorceress IV last night/this morning. "Spell of Binding" by Richard Corwin "Storm God" by Deborah Wheeler "Die Like a Man" by L.D. Woeltjen "Death and the Ugly Woman" by Bruce Arthurs "Bloodstones" by Deborah Vogel now I am only alternating between 4 anthologies at the moment. This volume was solid, but a slight step down from previous volumes, but still had a few really good stories in it, and a lot of just solid stuff. There was nothing in it that I felt was terrible, just a few that felt pedestrian, but you are going to have highs and lows in any anthology. -M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 26, 2024 16:23:47 GMT -5
Griots. A Sword and Soul AnthologyMilton J. Davis & Charles R. Saunders, eds., 2011 A collection of 14 stories; as usual with these types of books, the quality varies. All are sword & sorcery/fantasy stories, most set somewhere in Africa or some fantasy approximation thereof; some are straight up action stories in the Conan tradition, while others are more like fairy tales or fables. I won’t bother doing a rundown of them all, so I’ll just mention my favorites: “Awakening” by Valjeanne Jeffers, set in precolonial West Africa, focusing on a young princess named Nandi who wants to be a warrior (and she’s got the skills to back it) but her parents need her to marry the son of a rival monarch to secure peace between their kingdoms. You can guess how that all works out... “Skin Magic” by P. Djeli Clark, about a young former thief named Makami, who is cursed with a weird living tattoo on his chest that seems to be a magical portal to a dark dimension; whenever he’s in distress, Lovecraftian horrors are released from it. He’s being pursued by some very ruthless men who want to abduct him and he eventually finds refuge in the caravan of a kindly merchant with three daughters, one of whom seems quite knowledgeable about his tattoo, as she has a similar one. “Changeling” by Carole McDonnell, a sort of dark fairy tale about the youngest of three daughters of a queen, who’s a bit plump and considered homely, but who ends up happily married to a prince from an eastern kingdom. This causes problems down the line, as her eldest, and quite beautiful, sister envies her happiness. “Icewitch” by Rebecca McFarland Kyle, about a young man named Ashlan, a member of a tribe of hunters living somewhere near the Arctic circle, who goes into the frozen wilderness to pursue a witch who abducted his younger half-brother. He’s the only dark-skinned person in his community, the eldest son and favorite child of a mother who is now the chieftain’s wife, and he’d always believed that he was conceived by rape. However, once he tracks down the witch, she reveals some secrets about his heritage. “The Three-Faced One” by Charles Saunders, the best in the book, featuring his great sword & soul hero Imaro. In this one, he decides to help a small community of cattle herders in a remote valley who are forced to pay a heavy tribute every few weeks to a band of nomads who have an apparently supernatural 7-foot tall enforcer with three faces. This is one of the stronger small press/indie anthology books I’ve read in recent years (i.e., it’s much better than Black Pulp or The Mighty Warriors).
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Mar 26, 2024 16:29:58 GMT -5
Griots. A Sword and Soul AnthologyMilton J. Davis & Charles R. Saunders, eds., 2011 A collection of 14 stories; as usual with these types of books, the quality varies. All are sword & sorcery/fantasy stories, most set somewhere in Africa or some fantasy approximation thereof; some are straight up action stories in the Conan tradition, while others are more like fairy tales or fables. I won’t bother doing a rundown of them all, so I’ll just mention my favorites: “Awakening” by Valjeanne Jeffers, set in precolonial West Africa, focusing on a young princess named Nandi who wants to be a warrior (and she’s got the skills to back it) but her parents need her to marry the son of a rival monarch to secure peace between their kingdoms. You can guess how that all works out... “Skin Magic” by P. Djeli Clark, about a young former thief named Makami, who is cursed with a weird living tattoo on his chest that seems to be a magical portal to a dark dimension; whenever he’s in distress, Lovecraftian horrors are released from it. He’s being pursued by some very ruthless men who want to abduct him and he eventually finds refuge in the caravan of a kindly merchant with three daughters, one of whom seems quite knowledgeable about his tattoo, as she has a similar one. “Changeling” by Carole McDonnell, a sort of dark fairy tale about the youngest of three daughters of a queen, who’s a bit plump and considered homely, but who ends up happily married to a prince from an eastern kingdom. This causes problems down the line, as her eldest, and quite beautiful, sister envies her happiness. “Icewitch” by Rebecca McFarland Kyle, about a young man named Ashlan, a member of a tribe of hunters living somewhere near the Arctic circle, who goes into the frozen wilderness to pursue a witch who abducted his younger half-brother. He’s the only dark-skinned person in his community, the eldest son and favorite child of a mother who is now the chieftain’s wife, and he’d always believed that he was conceived by rape. However, once he tracks down the witch, she reveals some secrets about his heritage. “The Three-Faced One” by Charles Saunders, the best in the book, featuring his great sword & soul hero Imaro. In this one, he decides to help a small community of cattle herders in a remote valley who are forced to pay a heavy tribute every few weeks to a band of nomads who have an apparently supernatural 7-foot tall enforcer with three faces. This is one of the stronger small press/indie anthology books I’ve read in recent years (i.e., it’s much better than Black Pulp or The Mighty Warriors). This has been on my radar for a bit, but I've been on the fence whether to order it or not. I might have to pull the trigger later this spring when I clear the mass of anthologies I am currently sampling from. -M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 26, 2024 16:41:08 GMT -5
This has been on my radar for a bit, but I've been on the fence whether to order it or not. I might have to pull the trigger later this spring when I clear the mass of anthologies I am currently sampling from. Getting the ebook version might be the way to go if you don't mind that format. That's what I did when I couldn't find any reasonably priced hard copies - although that was a pretty long time ago, only a few years after it was published. Maybe there's cheap used copies floating around now. Anyway, if you order it directly from the MVmedia site it's only $3.99 (I think the Kindle price is a little more).
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 27, 2024 23:47:31 GMT -5
The Flying Sorcerers David Gerrald and Larry Niven I almost feel like this book couldn't decide if it really wanted to be satire or if it wanted to be a straight 'modern man stuck without technology' story. The plot is pretty basic... a man from a space faring race is investigation a primitive world with some interesting characteristics and gets stuck planet side due to the antics of the local Stone age village. Because the planet is odd... he needs to fly over the water 1/2 the world away to get back to a place where he can call his ship, so he marshalls the locals to try to build a flying machine (turned out to be a sory of Zeppelin, complete with dangerous Hydrogen) Along the way there are a few funny bits as the primitive people discover some modern things, but overall it's not nearly as funny as others. There are some interesting 'rebuilding tech' bits as well, but such a theme is handled far better in other stories. Nothing terrible per say, but just not particularly good either.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 28, 2024 16:50:26 GMT -5
Try Anything Once by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
When you're 23 books in to a continuing detective series, it's pretty clear that you like it. And it's probably at a point where the formula is set and maybe there's diminishing returns. I had thought that maybe I'd gotten to that point with Cool and Lam. But then again...maybe not. This was a super solid entry in the series 23 years and 23 books in (funny how that worked). Yeah, it's still mostly hitting the formula that was established after the end of WWII and Donald came back from service in the navy. But Gardner still throws a curve here and there. While Donald still gets himself in to a jam, it's mostly not his fault. Bertha gets him in to a case he doesn't want to take (not unusual), he really does try to keep it from spiraling out of control, and Frank Sellers is even more awful than usual. If I had a big complaint about the last few entries it's that Sellers has been made in to a quasi-antagonist. And that's a problem. On the other hand we see a nice turn in the relationship between Donald and Elsie, which is welcome. And Bertha was definitely better than usual. The real telling point is that I read this book (recognizing it's not super long) in two evenings. That's a sign that it sucked me in.
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Post by berkley on Mar 28, 2024 23:59:40 GMT -5
Try Anything Once by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
When you're 23 books in to a continuing detective series, it's pretty clear that you like it. And it's probably at a point where the formula is set and maybe there's diminishing returns. I had thought that maybe I'd gotten to that point with Cool and Lam. But then again...maybe not. This was a super solid entry in the series 23 years and 23 books in (funny how that worked). Yeah, it's still mostly hitting the formula that was established after the end of WWII and Donald came back from service in the navy. But Gardner still throws a curve here and there. While Donald still gets himself in to a jam, it's mostly not his fault. Bertha gets him in to a case he doesn't want to take (not unusual), he really does try to keep it from spiraling out of control, and Frank Sellers is even more awful than usual. If I had a big complaint about the last few entries it's that Sellers has been made in to a quasi-antagonist. And that's a problem. On the other hand we see a nice turn in the relationship between Donald and Elsie, which is welcome. And Bertha was definitely better than usual. The real telling point is that I read this book (recognizing it's not super long) in two evenings. That's a sign that it sucked me in.
I plan to read this series one of these days - assuming I like it after trying the first one - but I might try to sample it the meantime, by which I mean reading maybe two or three of them for now and coming back to the rest later on. I assume it's best to start at the beginning, but after that, would you recommend any particular ones, or just keep going in order?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 29, 2024 9:26:49 GMT -5
Try Anything Once by A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
When you're 23 books in to a continuing detective series, it's pretty clear that you like it. And it's probably at a point where the formula is set and maybe there's diminishing returns. I had thought that maybe I'd gotten to that point with Cool and Lam. But then again...maybe not. This was a super solid entry in the series 23 years and 23 books in (funny how that worked). Yeah, it's still mostly hitting the formula that was established after the end of WWII and Donald came back from service in the navy. But Gardner still throws a curve here and there. While Donald still gets himself in to a jam, it's mostly not his fault. Bertha gets him in to a case he doesn't want to take (not unusual), he really does try to keep it from spiraling out of control, and Frank Sellers is even more awful than usual. If I had a big complaint about the last few entries it's that Sellers has been made in to a quasi-antagonist. And that's a problem. On the other hand we see a nice turn in the relationship between Donald and Elsie, which is welcome. And Bertha was definitely better than usual. The real telling point is that I read this book (recognizing it's not super long) in two evenings. That's a sign that it sucked me in.
I plan to read this series one of these days - assuming I like it after trying the first one - but I might try to sample it the meantime, by which I mean reading maybe two or three of them for now and coming back to the rest later on. I assume it's best to start at the beginning, but after that, would you recommend any particular ones, or just keep going in order?
It probably doesn't make a huge amount of difference. The easiest way to do it would be to pick up the ones that have been reprinted by Hard Case Crime because they're pretty readily available. I could definitely dig back through and pick out the ones I liked the best, but the quality doesn't waiver a huge amount. I would probably say to avoid the three that were written and came out during World War II. Gardner had Donald Lamm join the navy and the three books just aren't the same without him. Not that Bertha Cool isn't a good character, but she's a better supporting character than a lead.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 31, 2024 14:01:45 GMT -5
Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos ed by Kerry Gammill and J. David Spurlock Art books are weird to review. One doesn't generally purchase an art book if one isn't already a fan of the artist. At least I don't. I suppose your mileage may vary. So really it's about how the package is presented and what supporting material there is. And that is even secondary, because you're mostly here for the pictures. At least I am. I grew up at the tail end of the "monster kid" era. If I'd been born fifteen or so years earlier I'd have hit it square. But monsters were still a thing when I was young. You could find Famous Monsters, Creepy, Eerie and the last of Marvel's monster comics on the newsstands. Their best days may have been behind them, but they were there. You could watch Universal monster movies on Friday late nights. I wasn't really a monster kid. My Uncle Doug had scared the bejeebus out of me with a life-size poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula on his door in the basement of Grandpa and Grandma's house. And it took me some time to get over it. But at the same time I was pretty fascinated by the Universal monsters and particularly the make-up that led to them. And I LOVED the Abbott and Costello Meet movies. So...yeah. Which brings us to Basil Gogos. I didn't buy Famous Monsters. It was expensive. But I would leaf through them before buying funnybooks and I'd linger over those old covers by Gogos. Because they were things of beauty. And as I got older I would look at that work as an important piece of pop culture. So...the book. It's really what you could want in an art book. The art is the emphasis. And while his monster work for Warren (and later similar work) is the cornerstone it also represents Gogos' work in the "Men's Magazines" of the time, his limited work on westerns (gorgeous) and a bit of his fine art work. Throughout there are discussions by Gogos of his methods, the genesis of some of the work and a bit about the business of art at the time. That information, straight from the artist's mouth, is extremely helpful. And there is the occasional accolade from peers, including James Bama, whose work was incredibly important to me. Ultimately, it's clear that Gogos was one of the great illustrators of his time. He just happened to come along after the Golden Age of Illustration, and his most important work were portraits of monsters. And they were portraits. Gogos was an amazing portrait artist. And he was a master of color. We were used to seeing these monsters in black & white. That was their natural element. But Gogos made them look like they had been in color all along. The right color. And it made them both more human and more inhuman in the portraiture.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,140
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Post by Confessor on Apr 2, 2024 6:48:45 GMT -5
I often think about buying art books, whether by the likes of Salvador Dali and Picasso, or by comic/pop culture artists like Boris Vallejo or Frank Frazetta, but I never do. I always kinda just think that if I want to look at the works of a particular artist I can access it all online.
I guess I just see art books as potentially taking up precious shelf space that could be used for books with words in them. But at the same time, I do kinda wonder if I'm missing out. Anyone care to try and sell me on art books?
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Post by EdoBosnar on Apr 2, 2024 7:04:51 GMT -5
(...) Anyone care to try and sell me on art books? Not me. My philosophy on them is pretty much the same. The only art books I have (which is not many) were given to me as gifts.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Apr 2, 2024 11:33:56 GMT -5
I often think about buying art books, whether by the likes of Salvador Dali and Picasso, or by comic/pop culture artists like Boris Vallejo or Frank Frazetta, but I never do. I always kinda just think that if I want to look at the works of a particular artist I can access it all online. I guess I just see art books as potentially taking up precious shelf space that could be used for books with words in them. But at the same time, I do kinda wonder if I'm missing out. Anyone care to try and sell me on art books? Screen images are unreliable in terms of color composition based on the settings of your own screen and that of the one who scanned/photographed the image initially and are often off to the actual colors of the image itself. Print usually offers a better representation of the actual colors of the piece, though aren't 100% accurate either, but their percentage is usually better than that of digital (unless there's a printing error or some sort). Neither is very good at conveying the texture of a piece (especially painting where brush strokes and thickness and layers of the paint contribute tot he overall look of the painting. Plus in this age of photoshop and AI, you can never be certain when a digital image has been altered or enhanced creating differences from the actual piece or how accurate a representation of the actual piece is, and the anonymity of the internet lets people make alterations with impunity or concern of repercussions. It can happen in print, but there's a lot more accountability there, and forgery is an issue in the art world as well, but again, it takes a lot more effort and there's a lot more chance of facing repercussions for it. Don't get me wrong, I use online sources to look up a lot of things, but there's a much larger chance the online image your seeing is inaccurate to the real thing than it is in print. Plus print is reliable. I own it and I control whether it stays available. I cannot control if someone hosting the image takes t down, or if a server goes down, the power goes out, etc. etc. All the same arguments people trot out to praise print comics over digital editions here. There's really no right or wrong answer, it's a matter of preference, but I prefer to have the actual art books with the better reproductions, color accuracy and reliability. Digital/online is great for exploration, but print is better for me in the stuff I want to be able to experience more than once because I like it. -M
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